Eric Hyman: Jansy
is quite right to call attention to the short stories. Beyond the obvious
“Vane Sisters” there is also “Details of a Sunset,” a story that needs to be
solved like a chess problem. I won’t give away the key move here but it
does involve consciousness after death.
JM: A great
many were written in Russian, while Nabokov was under the sway of
Russian culture and the prevailing beliefs at that period.
They a good point of departure when
we want to compare his later developments to see how his ideas about "the
other world" changed and became less general and more personal.
There are puzzling points when I
read comments about "ghosts" in Nabokov's work. Quite often these
ghosts seem to gain life outside literature and speak directly to the person
(who is also a reader.) Extra-textual ghosts?
Nabokov, of course, is always serious
even when he is building a satire: he is expressing real emotions, experiences,
fears. One should distinguish when he writes on "ghosts of
madness" (hallucinations and delusional constructions), or "literary ghosts
or ploys," and "synchronicities or coincidences", "links and
bobolinks", real "correlated patterns" artistically registered -
unexplained experiences which serve to indicate that not everything is totally
understood or rendered clear by Western science. Nabokov also describes different fantasies about the "hereafter".
His conception about "eternity" is never totally convergent. There are
different Nabokovian paradises, hells and eternities. When one uses these words
at times it is necessary to state one's textual point of departure to highlight
their idiosyncrasies. Intermediares between mankind and gods are equally
important ( Hermes, Iris, Seraphs, Prophets. devils)